Socrates of Kamchatka

“Socrates of Kamchatka” is a documentary essay about a small community in Kamchatka, Russia, told from a perspective of a horse called Socrates.

The film interweaves two stories: one of Anfisa, a determined Russian entrepreneur, and one of her horse’s – Socrates’ – who has been kidnapped and brutally murdered for no other reason but to “punish” Anfisa for her success.

As wounded Socrates is walking to Anfisa, he recollects his life: his childhood in a small village called Socialism; his youth in a town of Communism – that had been tentatively built in the woods, but then abruptly abandoned and evacuated; and finally, his short lived bliss in Tourism, a big city near the ocean-sea, where “people sell happiness to each other for cash money and interpersonal joy.”

Socrates’s somewhat awkward but lyrical “philosophical observations” reveal true depth of people’s trial and tribulations as they try to survive the regime changes.